The Philadelphia 76ers will look to have a productive offseason after a really disappointing ending to the 2020-21 season when they fell in Game 7 at home to the Atlanta Hawks in the second round. It was an ending not many foresaw considering the season Philadelphia had.
In terms of improving the roster, that may be hard to do. The Sixers don’t have much money to spend in free agency; they have just minimum contracts and the taxpayer mid-level exception of $5.9 million. That will not entice many free agents to join Philadelphia.
Therefore, the Sixers will have to look inward in order to improve for the next season.
“We don’t have a lot of buttons to push,” admitted team president Daryl Morey. “When you have three, top-level, max players, that’s actually the ideal situation you want as an NBA team, but it also starts to limit your options with sign and trades, and how much mid-level you have, and how much cap room you have to sign so it starts to limit all those things.”
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The Sixers will need Ben Simmons to really improve on the offensive end of the floor, and coach Doc Rivers believes he will do so. Joel Embiid must continue to take the next steps forward. They will need Tobias Harris, Seth Curry and the team’s youngsters to continue to develop.
“Internal improvement is probably the bigger lever, and the nice thing is because we have young players because we have players who, we think have areas that you can obviously improve, it’s pretty rare, frankly, to have top players who are already performing at a very high level in this league and also have things that you can point to and say like ‘Hey, if we can improve that, the team can get a lot better’,” Morey added. “That’s pretty rare and it’s actually an opportunity, not a negative.”
Obviously, Morey will look at every avenue to improve the roster, but at this moment, it will have to be an internal improvement in order to move forward.
“When you’re looking at how do we take the next step, all that said, even though the limited tools we have in terms of free agency and trade and draft, obviously, my job is to explore all those and we well,” he finished. “I would say more internal improvement than external.”
This post originally appeared on Sixers Wire! Follow us on Facebook!
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